Monday, July 27. 2009

I attended the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival last week because one of my new projects, Chased, written and to be directed by a new director, was selected to participate in the film financing forum.

Puchon (new spelling is Bucheon) is situated right between Seoul and Korea’s main international airport, Incheon. It’s considered a suburb of Seoul as most people who live here actually work in Seoul.

It was great meeting and talking to industry heavy weights such as Chris Lee (executive producer, Valkyrie, Superman Returns), Gloria Fan (executive producer, The International), Roy Lee (executive producer, The Ring, The Departed) and Yasuhiro Mase (executive producer, Departures aka Okuribito). I was particularly impressed with how smart and intuitive they are when it comes to story development.

Gloria Fan, Anderson Le and Ham Tran

Speaking of story development… On the 4th day I was told by a British producer friend that Anderson Le, Programmer of the Hawaii International Film Festival and producer of Breaking Point, another project in the film financing forum, had been accosted by a group of local gangsters the night before while drinking with friends at a bar. Anderson was reluctant to befriend the gangsters, but before he could say ‘no,’ the gangsters turned to another table and beat up someone for not showing respect to them. Seeing this Anderson had no choice but to let the gangsters join him and his friends. They drank together for three long hours.

The next day I told Anderson I’d heard about him being accosted by some gangsters. He looked a bit confused so I repeated the story to him. Looking amused, he said it did happen but not to him, although he was happy to take credit for the protagonist/victim. About five minutes later Anderson told me someone else just said they heard the same thing about him.

I wonder if someone could find a plot in this anecdote and develop it into a movie script by the next Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival?

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